Tyler Beck's page

Gretcha is ready to put her crazy eyes to good use against the longshanks. This should be loads of fun!

"Gretcha picked! Knew it would happen! Bye other gobbos, will come back to show off lots of treasures stolen from dead longshanks!"

Seriously though, there were a LOT of great characters here! You guys all did great!

"Yes.. good team! We do good! Let's go destroy the longshanks!"

"I's do to show you who boss. That me, Gretcha. You know now. I most powerful gobbo here!" She winks at Mugmuff.

Actually, you fail. DC 15 and you take a -2 for the hypnotic stare. I should've specified that. :-P

"Ha! You all gobbos think you so tough. You don't know tough! Gretcha make the biggest, baddest gobbos quake in fear!" Gretcha's crazy eyes start almost spinning around in her head, making her look so much more scary than a normal goblin. Despite being beautiful (by goblin standards) her beauty takes on a terrifying quality.
She focuses her hypnotic stare on Mugmuff, then says "You'z wants to kill that one. Kill him for me, and I be grateful..."
She casts murderous command on Mugmuff, pointing him at Bouncy, trying to get them to fight simply for her amusement.

"Gretcha wish to join epic adventure! She use many tricks to defeat longshanks! You wait and see!"

See this profile for Gretcha, who I made for a failed "We Be Goblins" with all Occult classes. She is a Mesmerist from the Occult Adventures playtest. I know that might not be QUITE what you are looking for, but she will be SUPER FUN, trust me!!

A slew of changes have been added for the Mesmerist (officially), so I'm going to be updating Gretcha to match those changes. She's going to be WAY more useful now :-D

Official mesmerist updates

Reflex: 1d20 + 5 ⇒ (7) + 5 = 12

"Fine! I show you all!"

Gretcha runs back to Squealy, jumps onto his back, and tries her best to hold on. Unfortunately I don't get the +4 to Ride because I traded out that racial feature... lol

Ride: 1d20 + 3 ⇒ (13) + 3 = 16
Ride: 1d20 + 3 ⇒ (17) + 3 = 20
Ride: 1d20 + 3 ⇒ (3) + 3 = 6

Gretcha holds on surprisingly well for a few seconds, and it's starting to look like she's going to make it, but then Squealy gets wise and digs in his heels for a dead stop, throwing Gretcha into the fence. OW!

HAHAHAHA That couldn't have been more awesome! I can't believe the stupid pig made it RIGHT on the DC! I should have used my mesmerist stare first!!

Gretcha looks frightened. "SQUEALY IS DEMON! IGNORED MY SPELL! RUN, GOBS!" and she starts running away, definitely out of the pen.

Seeing the other goblins failing miserably at riding Squealy, Gretcha takes her turn.... she walks into the pen, looks square at the scared pig, and casts color spray. DC 14 Will save from the pig. Evil laugh.

Gretcha will watch a few of the other goblins attempt to ride Squealy Nord first... she has a plan, though.

"Gretcha not afraid of any apples. Bring them on, chief!"

Fort: 1d20 + 1 ⇒ (13) + 1 = 14

Gretcha has several of the apples, gets nice and goblin-drunk, and begins screaming at everyone to kiss her feet. She might even get herself in a bit of trouble by casting murderous command on a pair of goblins and watching them attempt to kill each other until they come to their senses... and then probably try to kill each other anyway. They're goblins, after all!

Not a problem, thanks for keeping us informed :) I'm really looking forward to mesmerising some doods! :)

"Fat like chief! She much goblin... much more than you! And I not hit you... I your friend..."
Gretcha will use her hypnotic stare on Grubmunch... all it does really is to make him feel a bit more weak-willed, but hopefully it's enough to convince him that she's the superior gobbo. :)

"My mother twice the goblin you, Horse Ears! She make old goblin chief her slave! I do same with you, you not be careful!"

Gretcha keeps all of this information to herself, but will tell her allied goblins things as they come up. ;-D

Gretcha goes around to a few key gobbos in the tribe, trying to learn as much as she can about the swamp before they go there.

Gather Info: 1d20 + 7 ⇒ (6) + 7 = 13

She's not terribly convincing, mostly running around the town screaming "YOU! TELL ME THINGS ABOUT SWAMP! YOU BEEN THERE? NO! THEN KISS FEET!"

Gretcha knew it! We best goblins, and I best of the best!

"We go get boomy-things for you, chief! Gretcha serve you the best!" She blows the chieftan a slobbery kiss, doing her best to charm him with her looks. She's hot for a goblin, anyway!

Seeing Grubmunch's anguish, Gretcha smiles and leans closer to him, screaming right in his huge ear. "IS VOICE TOO LOUD, IDIOT BIG-EARS?? I TRY TO QUIET DOWN!"

Gretcha enters the tent boldly, giving a withering look to Slorb as she enters. "Chief! What you want? You tell these other idiots how I best gob in tribe? That's it, no?"

"Chief Gutwad invite us all here. Maybe he finally realize that I best goblin in tribe, make me second-in-cummand. Who want kiss my feet? " She holds up her dainty (for a goblin) foot, waiting for one of the others to kiss it.
"If no one kiss my feet, I make you kill each other. Your choice."

Gretcha checking in!

And here is Gretcha Crazyeyes. Backstory is as follows, written in her own words:

"Grethca always pretty for gobbo. She make all other gobbos swoon. Other gobbos don't know that she have powers over them, though. She very strong mind, though she not actually think so good. Gretcha steal scrolls from humans, learn read them well enough to cast them, and kill chieftan and underlings alike. She strong gobbo, and others know it, because of burns on her face. Now she try to build her own gobbo tribe, but it hard work, so for now, just waiting..."

Dotting this one. My interpretation would be that you get rounds of rage from both abilities, and your effective level for rage powers gained from the Rage subdomain power would be effectively doubled thanks to the inquisition ability, but you still couldn't take any rage powers that have Barbarian level prerequisites, per this part:

...You cannot select any rage power that possesses a level requirement, but otherwise your barbarian level is equal to 1/2 your cleric level....

So, at 10th level, a cleric with the Rage subdomain and the Anger inquisition would have an effective Barbarian level of 12th ([1/2 * 10] plus [10 - 3]), but you'd be restricted to a pretty small list of rage powers, so it's not OP in my opinion. At very most, you'd be looking at an effective Barbarian level of 27 at 20th level, with a max of 2 rage powers, and you're missing out on a lot of other cool Domain power and domain spell options by going this route.

Submitted! Good Lord it was tough to hit that button! Good luck, everyone!

Darn, the forum ate my response.

Yes, you can use the reveal power from the card AND the reveal power from Lini's character power with the Cat as your animal ally.

Note that you could also use Lini's reveal power (powering it with the Cat) and then use a discard power from that same card, as long as you did it in that order.

Having a second animal ally to reveal to activate her power makes no difference in the case that you're asking about.

Yeah, I'm beginning to wish I hadn't popped into this thread. Way too much hostility here... you're killing my RPG Superstar buzz.

BBT, can I make a quick suggestion? Try to type things in a less definitive manner when you're talking about another specific poster on the forums. It sounds like you're reprimanding the other person, as opposed to being helpful.

With that, I'm bowing out of this one. Good luck, guys!

Yay I can finally post!!

Okay, so first off I'd like to thank each and every one of you for your comments and critiques. There were several things I would have liked to do slightly differently with this creature, but word count really constrained me. Hopefully I can address a few of the issues that you guys brought up here:

1. Flavor: i.e. why a sewer shark?
I started writing this monster up with the thought that it would be a sewer creature from the beginning, so when the twist was revealed that it needed to be an urban creature, I was ecstatic. I had a couple other ideas going through my head, but I felt that this was by far the most evocative and interesting.

I was trying to go for "gross" but not so much that it would involve crude language and description of things that might cause people to feel overly icky. Having it covered in nasty sores seemed appropriate, and from there I decided to make it an aberration instead of a magical beast. Swallowing its prey was an instant given for me, and the multigrab came about when I thought "What would it eat in the sewer? Rat swarms, of course!"

2. Abilities
Multigrab
I'm glad that many people liked the Multigrab ability... it's something that I've felt for a while that some monsters should be able to do... why should the Colossal dragon be limited to holding one creature in one of its claws, as opposed to one in each claw and one in its mouth? Some people are worried about it being too powerful against a single creature, but this monster is absolutely not built to fight against a single creature. If I was running it as a GM against just a single creature, I would probably just substitute a regular shark instead. However, with a party of 4-5, this creature will do decent damage while grappling a few characters at a time and trying to swallow one during each turn, and that's what it's really designed to do.

My original version of this ability included a +2 to grapple checks for each tentacle in addition to the first used to grapple a creature, but I realized that against a single foe that would be way too devastating, so i dropped that.

Specifically in response to something that Mr. Daigle said: Yes I definitely recognize that saying that a "rat swarm" is a favored meal doesn't work with the grappling, but in this case I had to go with imagery over rules-correctness. In reality, the selachipoda likes to eat singular rats that happen to be moving in a large group (which is what a rat swarm is, really) so I went with the word "swarm" despite its specificity in the rules.

Regurgitate Skeleton
This was actually the last major change I made to the selachipoda before I submitted it, and it originally was meant to allow for the idea of the creature's nasty stomach contents to reanimate some of the meals it eats and then those undead creatures to crawl back out of its gullet. I ran into a couple little issues when writing up this ability, the largest of which was that we technically can't use any templates for our submissions (even if the template doesn't apply to the creature itself). So, instead of being able to have a rat with the skeletal template jump out of its mouth and attack, I had to use the slightly awkward wording that I used, to get the point across. If this monster was to be published, I would instead have it regurgitate a skeletal (as in the skeletal template) version of its last meal (which could be used to increase the CR of the encounter, with 1d3 skeletal rats being the default). I might even include a random (1d6?) table of likely creatures to be spit out!

Nicholas Herold mentioned another thing about this ability that I would have liked to do differently, but couldn't come up with a better way... the 40% chance of the regurgitation per round. The reason I did it the way I did was that the selachipoda is supposed to be non-intelligent... certainly not intelligent enough to decide when to burp up a few skeletal rats. I couldn't come up with a better way of making this happen without allowing the selachipoda to be strategic about it, so if you can come up with a better way to write this, please let me know! :)

@Lee Hammock: I didn't think about where the rats would show up exactly, but it was my intention that they'd appear adjacent to the selachipoda, with preference given to solid surfaces so that they wouldn't immediately sink.

Swallow whole and stomach poison
I was obviously going for "gross" here, along with "scary!" because of the stomach essentially having teeth and dealing slashing damage. This was written to evoke the idea of a creature being swallowed, then being slashed by lots of little shark teeth and having gross, dirty water infect their wounds. This could have been done with a disease, but I felt that a poison was more appropriate to the CR, as some others have pointed out.

Other abilities that I considered
One thing that I would have liked to include in this monster that I couldn't fit because of word limits was the ability to fit through areas smaller than its body without squeezing (so that PCs wouldn't be able to just run through an area of the sewer where the waterway is 5 feet and effectively defeat the thing). I dropped this ability for the word count of the regurgitate skeleton ability.

3. THANK YOU!
I'd just like to thank everyone for reading the monster and giving me their critiques, and to everyone who voted in the item or monster rounds (whether you voted for the selachipoda or not!) thank you SO MUCH for your hard work and taking the time to read all of these crazy creatures and items!!

If you have any specific questions or clarifications left about my monster, please don't hesitate to post here... I'll be watching it carefully as we go into the next few rounds. Thanks again!

Tyler Beck wrote:

Just thought I'd jump in here now that there have been 1000 posts... has this been resolved in any way? Or is it just endless back-and-forth?

One of the devs, Stephen Radney-Macfarland, settled it. Per the quote above Humans don't have tails, can take the feat but can't use it unless they get a tail somehow, i.e. through a feat, magic, or GM fiat.

There was the whole Kobold/Aasimar debate fiasco following that ruling but it is Monday and I really don't feel like getting back into all of that.

Thanks for being PATIENT and laying it out for me. :-D

See what I did there?

LOL

Just thought I'd jump in here now that there have been 1000 posts... has this been resolved in any way? Or is it just endless back-and-forth?

Still have to wait another day and a half to find out which of us advance!!! ARRGH it's killing me!

In other news, I'm playtesting my encounter tonight with my group. I hope it goes well... it's very hard to fit everything I'd like the encounter to have into 1500 words.

I've been running a game with a Swashbuckler, and I actually agree with Cheapy... being able to roll an extra dice on pretty much any type of check using a point of Panache already makes Swashbucklers VERY powerful. I think Dex to damage without needing Dervish Dance might send it over the top into TOO powerful.

EDIT: Replace "pretty much any type of check" in my post with "a lot of checks that are useful in a Skull & Shackles game". That happens to be what I'm running my players though, so I might be seeing a skewed data set on how useful the Swashbuckler is.

Yeah, I think you guys are reading too much into this. The player can still use the Two-Weapon Fighting feat, because he meets the prerequisites of it, and it's from a legal source. Why would he have to lose that feat because he gained a third arm?

Hawkmoon269 wrote:

I just realized, I don't think anyone answered your first question about what character your friend should play. I think it is a good idea to have a variety of skills and desired cards among your party. That will help with closing checks, enabling your group to better acquire the cards you encounter, and also not compete for the same cards.

But that being said, I think it is more important for everyone to play a character they enjoy. So if your friend really doesn't want to be a spell caster, let them choose who they want. Offer them advice, but leave the choice up to them.

he ended up playing as mershiel and we ended up obliterating perils of the lost coast and almost lost on aproach to thistletop

then i found out he was using two blessing of arbadar so i swapped them for two calistras when he left

both of us played it either safe or like noobs:
we poured our points into our best stats
he now has dexterity +2
i have wisdom +2
he is now proficient with weapons
i get a +2 on my base healing
pretty much i hang back and let him clear out dungeons and try to pick up as much as i can before he finds and kills the villian since heres my deck

holy bolt
holy candle
mend
cure
3x blessing of sarenrae
3 blessing of the gods
flaming mace +1
warhammer +1
magic chain mail
father zantus
shield of fire resistance

I would have loved to understand what your posts here were saying, but punctuation is missing completely, and I'm having a lot of trouble parsing your post because of it. In the future, could you try to add commas and periods? Thanks! :-D

A young gnomish woman with blue eyes and blonde hair (scandalous!) walks in with a Large spinosaurus wearing +1 demon-defiant studded leather. She introduces herself as Nalshene... no last name for this girl!

She starts describing the latest mission that graduated her into the rank of Seeker.

Nalshene and Narshala
Sorcerer (Sylvan) 11 / Oracle (Heavens) 1 with spinosaurus companion

She'll be playing in Eyes of the Ten at Owlcon in Houston, TX at the end of the month.

I am assuming you've seen this, but I'm sharing in case you (or someone else) hadn't.

*edit* It would be nice if the official rules were released soon though.

Oh yes, but thank you. I just really want to see the official rules. :)

I've hit refresh way too many times today. I need the rules!

Human Monk Underfoot Adept/Maneuver Master

Str 8 Dex 17 Con 10 Int 13 Wis 18(human) Cha 7 all bumps to dex (20 pt buy)

Racial Heritage Halfling at 1 to take the underfoot adept archetype, manuever master archetype, can trip colossal creatures at level 12.
If you take Weapon Finesse, and are using a finessable weapon(such as unarmed), you use dex automatically for your CMB per a ruling already posted. (Only applies to trip, disarm, and grapple so far as I know.) If you want more than the 2 maneuvers here, then you need to take agile maneuvers as well, but this build only uses finessable ones.

** spoiler omitted **
** spoiler omitted **
At 12th level, CMD equiv creatures ~34-36, numbers above include no magic whatsoever. Easy to get a +6/8 with items/spells/bard. You can also add wis bonus to either maneuver each turn, decided at start of turn.

Standard action: trip, free Unarmed strike(vicious stomp), then grapple while prone at +4(Sweeping maneuver), grapple to pin as move(still +4 prone)(great grappler),...

Wow, I see why your screenname is TGMaxMaxer. That's super impressive. I'll have to try this one out sometime. (Not in PFS, cuz I'm pretty sure the other players would murder me, LOL)

Skaldi the Tallest wrote:

I found a mistake as well.

Additional Resources wrote:

: the oracle mystery on page 19 is legal

There is no such mystery. This makes me sad. I'd love yet another mystery to build an oracle around.

It might help if you also included what book. There's lots of books that have a page 19...

They were referring to the newest addition, Player Companion: People of the Sands. There is no new oracle mystery on the page listed.

Tyler Beck wrote:

Joseph Kellogg wrote:

So, everybody's hard at work on their encounters? I've got a couple I'm excited about, and just finished up an NPC stat block.

Joseph,

If you look at last year's rules for it, they didn't really allow for full stat blocks. Last year's rules
It seems we can really only do short-hand stuff like this:

3 goblins CR 1/3
XP 135 each
hp 6 each (Bestiary XX)

Unless I'm reading something completely incorrectly...
Especially given this line in rule #3: "Do not use customized monsters or hazards that do not already have a stat block from a Paizo source if the effects of the variation cannot be summed up by adding one line to the stat block (such as a half-fiend troll, a goblin rogue 5, or an advanced spectre)—normally you would include a complete stat block for such a monster, and you won't have room to do so within the 1,500 word limit for your entry."

Well, I, uh... meant I was just doing it for fun, of course!

:) Just wanna make sure we're all doing it right, cuz I don't want to see anyone else DQ'd... that would be terrible. I think we've all done an excellent job so far, and I look forward to seeing who makes it through this round!

So, everybody's hard at work on their encounters? I've got a couple I'm excited about, and just finished up an NPC stat block.

Joseph,

3 goblins CR 1/3
XP 135 each
hp 6 each (Bestiary XX)

Unless I'm reading something completely incorrectly...
Especially given this line in rule #3: "Do not use customized monsters or hazards that do not already have a stat block from a Paizo source if the effects of the variation cannot be summed up by adding one line to the stat block (such as a half-fiend troll, a goblin rogue 5, or an advanced spectre)—normally you would include a complete stat block for such a monster, and you won't have room to do so within the 1,500 word limit for your entry."

You can use any of the 32 monsters from Round 2, it doesn't have to be one from an author who makes it to Round 3.

(Which, FYI, is how we normally do it... it's easier to say "anything from a previous round this year is allowed" than make it more complex by crossing some things off the list.)

Now that we've seen the other monsters, quick question:

When we use one of the other submitted monsters, do we have to use them EXACLY as written, or can we make shorthand changes to them just like Paizo monsters? Also, if we feel that the CR for the creature was slightly off the mark, can we change the CR when we use it in our writeup?

In the Encounter thread I started several other ones were posted as well.

That's where I saw them! Thanks!!

I'm going to use this in my game. Except to use its power the holder has

to stand and look in the mirror over her shoulder. That is more spooky.

OOH! I LOVE that visual! I might put this in my skull and shackles campaign as a piece of loot, and see if my players use it when they run into some ghosty-type creatures. I'm absolutely sure that the Undead Lord cleric in my campaign will enjoy seeing what any undead creatures he commands looked like before being undead-ified.

Hey, thanks for all the comments.

I am a fist time entrant with no real writing experience, so I appreciate the feedback on getting the language tighter.

I was shooting for a fairly simple effect, but I really wanted to try and inspire the imagination with a cool visual. And it seems that I achieved at least that much.

On the price, I pretty much just ballparked it. I knew the item that gave permanent poison protection was 27k, so I figured 6000gp for basically 1xday and an attunement period was about right. But some of your comments have convinced me that maybe that was too low.

Personally, I like scorpions, so I went with that theme, but I think any reasonable GM will allow their players to re-skin with whatever charm they like (spider, imp, etc).

I went with neck slot and a choker because I liked the image of having the charm tight against your skin, so it can absorb the poison.

I guess I could have re-thought the delivery method/mechanics. I envisioned that maybe you face a spider in one encounter, and in a future encounter, you would already have the weapon ready to go with the poison. Since a lot of the creatures that poison you are immune to their own. And some targets are more susceptible than others, so you may want to wait before delivering it.But I agree it can be a challenge to absorb and deliver in the same encounter.

The Gm would have to keep track of the poison stats. I think that with a knowledge check, the character could get a good idea of the strength of the poison.

Anyhow there were so many great items out there, that mine could easily be on the outside, so I am truly thankful to all the voters and judges who liked this enough to make it top-32

-Andrew

@Andrew: Don't sell yourself short, your item definitely brings an interesting visual appeal and has cool effects. I'm looking forward to seeing your monster.

I seem to remember seeing a set of blank map templates posted in a previous year's thread, but I can't seem to find it now. Does anyone have the link to those?

Tyler Beck wrote:

I also really wish that the rules allowed us to use creatures and rules elements from Player Companion books, since there are so many great things in those books. C'est la vie.

I'd bet that those sources are restricted because they're not as freely available; voters (and contestants) aren't as likely to have them or be able to look up the elements that you might use from them.

Yeah, I guess it's not surprising, but I don't have to like it. :-P